I recently returned to the West Desert of Utah to photograph the Onaqui herd of wild horses .  It is always an adventure to go out there.  It takes about two hours to drive there from my home.  You never know what you are going to come home with, if anything. 

There are so many things that are out of your control when you go out there, so it is best to be prepared for failure.  Sometimes you don’t even find the horses.  On this most recent trip, part of the reason for going was that the skies were cloudy.  Only recently have we had clouds, with some rain hopefully expected in the next few days.  When I see clouds in the sky, I look forward to even light without harsh, hard shadows during the day, and hopefully the sun slips below the clouds before it rises or sets for some really nice directional golden hour of light. 

With it being so hot, we concentrated our search for the herd near water sources.  We came across a small band of about six, but hoped we could do better. After driving past the Simpson Springs Pony Express Trail stop, we found a group of about 50. We actually found them between two sources, munching out on whatever was edible.  

We parked the car, gathered our gear and prepared to go “shoot horses.”  Well, that was when my first challenge appeared.  I could not see anything on the back of my Nikon Z8 nor could I see anything through the viewfinder.  I had been out doing milky way photography the night before and I remembered I had left my camera in starlight mode and had selected d11 on the camera to warm the display colors.  I was pretty sure that was the problem, but it was so bright I could see nothing on either screen and assumed something else was going on.  I pulled the battery, I cycled through the viewfinder options and nothing.  Well, good thing I had two cameras.   It made me less flexible as we quietly moved out from the car to try to make some photos.  I was determined to not let the potentially broken camera interfere with my shooting process. 

With my working camera set the way I wanted, off I went.  You try to anticipate where the horses are moving, you try to place yourself in a good spot to catch good light and good backgrounds. You watch the clouds and the sun to anticipate what may be happening there.  You keep an eye on the horses to see where they are moving; even when they seem gathered as a group, they are slowly moving and moving.   Sometimes all those things come together.  I have made almost 40k photos of the Onaqui Horses over the years stored in Lightroom.  Of those, about 500 are worth looking at, 136 are nice enough to share, and about 40 are pretty darn good.  Yesterday I made about a dozen photos I am pleased with.  

As we had hoped for, about 20 minutes before sunset, the sun dropped below the clouds, warming everything with wonderful, directional, golden light.  It was magical, if  only for 15 minutes or so.  The horses, they did not really cooperate, but it did not matter.  It was an amazing sunset and it was so lovely to watch the light play off the horses, lighting their manes and tails from behind sometimes, or bathing them in rich, golden light.   

Did I capture the best wild horse photo ever?  Not even close, but I keep going out, usually coming home with a photo or two I am happy to share.  I am looking forward to my next trip.